Fructan nomenclature
First of all I want to point out that the nomenclature for fructans was develloped only for short fructans. The naming of fructans is hardly ever used for over DP 10. There are different types of nomenclatures for fructans. I will explain the nomenclature of Waterhouse & Chatterton (1993). The advantage of this system is it's simplicity and the ability to easily read the linkage structure of both branched and unbranched mixed-linkage fructosyl units. The drawback of this system is that it can become ambiguous when more than three bifurcation branches occur. The nomenclature is used for fructans of DP > 3. The name becomes kesto- plus the appropriate Greek root for each DP size, and ends with -ose (Eg kestopentaose). Compounds are named from the sucrose unit out. When chains are attached to both the fructosyl and the glucosyl of sucrose, the fructosyl is numbered first (the one on the glucosyl also get's "6G" G in underscore ) and, at other branches the 1-linked branch is named first. At branch points, each branch is seperately named by it's linkagetype, and separated by "&". When a linkage is described before the branch point is designated by a ",". Graphically a sucrose ( G <-> F) is first drawn. A 2->6 bond is depicted horizontally, and a 2->1 bond is depicted vertically.
Last updated 14/08/96
© 1996 jkoster@hotmail.com
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